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Chapter One: Mars covers the setting, both past and present. Centuries ago the civilized Red Men realized their world was drying up. No real reason was ever determined for the drying, but the Red Men were desperate and united to build a series of canals across their world to ferry water from the remaining sources across the globe. In the process of devoting all of their resources to the canal project, the Red Men found their civilization slipping away. Now they live in a world they no longer fully understand, with remnants of ancient technology breaking down along with their culture and sense of order. And Mars continues to die.
There’s a lot more to the chapter than just history though. A few major cities are covered, along with other notable geographical features. Not many, but enough for a good start. Some background on Red Man culture is covered as well, covering such things as holidays and diet, and the other main races (the Green Men, the White Apes, the Synthe-Men, and the Grey Men) are introduced. Some noteworthy locations and figures are lightly covered as well, such as the Red King of the Green Men and the Polar Stations. All throughout though, there’s a sense that civilization is ending and the world itself is coming to an end. Sky galleons still fly and radium guns are still made (if only by hand), but no one alive knows how to build the airships (or how they even work) and the power source for the radium weapons is seen as too scarce a commodity to waste on frequent gunfire. It’s not quite post- or pre-apocalyptic in the traditional sense, as things feel like they’ve gradually reached this point over centuries, and may or may not still have centuries to go before everybody is dead. But Mars is dying. Plot seeds and story ideas abound, and I find myself wanting more out of personal greed than any shortcoming of the book.
In chapter Two: Characters, we get details on half a dozen major races. Each is given quite a bit of detail mechanically, culturally, and even physiologically somewhat. I’ll start with the most familiar, the Earth Men. They’re normal Earth people except somehow they were transported to Mars, and in many cases given strange new (yet very minor) powers because of it. The Red Men are basically humans but colored differently in various crimson skin colors; they’re also egg-laying mammals, who keep their eggs in communal clutches and detect their own children by smell. Despite their decaying civilization, the Red Men are still the dominant race of the planet. The Green Men are barbaric savages, fairly animalistic, with bug-like heads atop large green human-like bodies. While they are sentient, they are also fairly alien from a human perspective. The White Apes are white colored gorillas from the remaining jungles of Mars. In their youth they wage war and relish in battle, but as they age they begin to mature and realize their race too is doomed. The Grey Men are squid like monsters which lurk beneath the surface of Mars and experiment with horrible machines in their bid to enslave the world (and eat delicious brains!). The Synthe-Men are constructs, built for specific tasks and roles to help maintain the canal system of Mars. Also included are some potentially useful guidelines for creating other, less prominent, races in the Mars setting. The text says the information on new races is copied from the Savage Worlds Sci-fi World Builder Toolkit (and copied with permission before anyone gets concerned), but since I don’t have that book the inclusion of this material is appreciated. New Edges and Hindrances are also included (which might prove useful to someone running a more fantasy themed game outside of Mars ), as is a section on Archetypal roles characters might chose to play.
With Three: Gear, we get a run down on weapons, armor, vehicles, and the economics of it all. Weapons tend to be rather archaic, featuring blades and handbows prominently, although radium pistols fill the niche of “ancient, dwindling laser weapons” very nicely. There’s a recurring theme of “do I use my energy cell to power my pistol or my boat?” Besides the radium weapons, the other high point of this short chapter would be the tripods of the Grey Martians. Tripods are giant walking war machines, which spray deadly heat rays over everything while their hideous pilots remain safe inside the nearly indestructible vehicle. My only gripe is that this chapter is really too short; some notes on Weird Science or other ancient technology would have been greatly appreciated. And in this case I don’t think it’s entirely a matter of me wanting more good stuff out of a greedy appetite.
There’s some interesting new stuff in Four: Setting Rules. For starters, in Mars Wild Card characters can only die as part of “a Finishing Move against an Incapacitated victim.” A new Incapacitation table is included to reflect this, but it’s not clear how it works exactly (I’m guessing characters who reach Incapacitated roll their Vigor and compare it to the table, but the book doesn’t say). Characters can also perform Stunts, taking penalties to their rolls in exchange for dramatic actions and more bennies. And since Mars lets players use bennies to declare story elements, players will probably want as many as they can get. Also included are rules for Mooks (characters weaker than Extras and meant to be dealt with en masse) and Henchmen (characters who are better than Extras, but not as good as full Wild Cards). There’s some neat stuff here that would work well in other pulpy settings. Rounding out the chapter are several pages covering Airships, Airship combat, boarding actions, and the like. It’s not very realistic, but to paraphrase the funniest bit in the book: “while this is far from realistic, it is a simple way to quickly account for things. Game Masers who wish to figure actual ranges using the Pythagorean theorem are more than welcome to do so.”
I hate essay chapters in RPGs with a passion. Five: Gamemastering I did not entirely hate. It explores a small bit of the history of the genre of “sword and planet”, the thematic elements, and how to build adventures in the setting. It’s geared more towards people who’ve never played RPGs before I think, but there’s some good genre specific information as well. There’s also a simple little random adventure generator included; it’s not terribly complex or deep, but it might help get the creative juices flowing. That said, I think the chapter was copied from the earlier edition, as it refers to “other d20 games” and “Action Points”.
I absolutely loved Six: Beasts of Mars. Not so much because of the original monsters and aliens (which were decent), but because of the “Marsifier.” The book comes with less than a dozen creatures of its own, but the “Marsifier” is a set of tables and modifications to turn any familiar creature or monster from the Savage Worlds line into some new bizarre thing. The sample the book uses is to turn a Large Bear from the core rules into a four-armed, six-eyed, horned thing that moves surprisingly fast. It’s the kind of toy I can see getting use in other Savage Worlds games.
Seven: Slavers of Mars is a five-part, so-so adventure. Some other adventure seeds are included, along with NPCs and a special bonus adventure for this version of the book. Nothing terrible, but nothing all that great either. It covers all the bases and hits most of the high points of the setting. Rounding out the book are some random encounter tables.
A small note on them old timey attitudes. While racism, sexism, and themes of the “noble savage” are common to the original source material, Mars takes a somewhat more modern approach. You can certainly play stories of enlightened (white) Earth Men come to save the ignorant Red Men from even more horrible races, or you can play up how the Red Men are really no different from anyone else. Racial issues with the White Apes, Green Men, and others should be excused since they really are different from humans (Martian or Earthling), but you can also play them up as little more than “humans in alien suits”. The sexism of the source material is also something that groups can indulge in, where women are buxom and helpless while men have huge pectoral muscles and equally immense swords and spears, or you can instead have female sky pirates leading crews with their earned wit and skill while men rely on more than fist and blade to solve everything. In other words, you can relish in the dated tropes of the material or ignore it for a more politically correct game; the book itself seems to me to be pretty open to either approach.
Style: If 3 is average, I’ll give Mars a “just under the mark” high 2 . It reuses its own art, it has open parentheses without closing (some would argue that parentheses shouldn’t be used anyway), blatant copy/paste problems, and general bad editing really hurt it. The writing style is okay, although occasionally it has gems. There’s a decent table of contents for those that care, but no index. A map of the setting is included, but it’s close to being so vague as to be worthless. And finally the layout is pretty boring, with lots of empty white space. A few things are mentioned in one sentence only (like the Yellow Men) and never described, but I think that’s more intentional than not. Mars is really close to feeling “okay” in terms of Style for me, but so many little things keep adding up that I don’t think it deserves an average rating.
Substance: High 4 , without a doubt. There’s tons of story ideas, tools for easily creating new monsters and races, and plenty of information to get you started for some time. The default assumption is that characters will be Red Men, but the book gives you plenty of other options and some tools to run such games. I didn’t particularly care for the adventures, but they were decent at covering a lot of tropes to the setting. I do think more information would have been nice, but I’m impressed with the amount and quality of what’s there. Some more geographical information, better adventures, and perhaps just more of everything great, and I’d give this book a 5.
In summation, it isn’t as pretty as it should be, but it’s a pretty good book anyway.
